MASON - At least 10 people have been charged in connection with a months-long string of home invasions, burglaries and other crimes last year in mid-Michigan, including Ingham, Eaton and Clinton counties.

Ingham County Sheriff's officials said the investigation spanned nearly 18 months and led detectives as far north as Clare, as far east as Flint and as far south and west as Jackson and Kalamazoo.

Police solved two dozen burglary cases in Ingham County, with other cases solved "through association," officials said Monday in a news release.

Sheriff's officials formed a regional task force after seeing a dramatic spike in break-in reports in Aurelius, Vevay and Ingham townships beginning in April 2017 and continuing through August 2017.

The sheriff's office took 51 breaking-and-entering reports in those areas during that time.

"I assigned a detective to it, he reached out to see if (other agencies) had similar problems, and it went from there," Ingham County Sheriff's Detective Sgt. Chauncey Shattuck said. "It was just a lot of good inter-agency communication."

Eight of the suspects are from Ingham County, one is from Eaton Rapids and one is from Flint, officials said. Some of the defendants were working with one or more of the others, but the defendants were not all working together as part a large ring, Shattuck said.

Some of the suspects have already been convicted and sentenced, while others are still moving through the court system, he said. At least two were charged in more than one county, he said.